Google Geography: Maps Meet Multimedia
Welcome to the web resource for this workshop! Google Maps, and by extension, Google Earth, offer a media rich learning tool. But creating passive consumers of geographic information shouldn't be your goal. Teachers and students can use these tools to create interactive, multimedia maps they can share with anyone in the world. Here are just a few ideas:
- Create a family tree by creating a placemark at each person's birthplace and including a paragraph and a picture about each one.
- Create historical maps of war battles, or focus on one battle and mark specific locations. Students write a paragraph and include a picture from each site.
- Students create an interactive map as a part of a country or state report.
- Interact geologic formations in various parts of the world.
- Explore outer space with Google Sky and use "street view" to go underwater in oceans.
- Students create math problems involving time and distance.
- Foreign language students can use the satellite imagery and street view to explore cities and famous places in the countries that speak that language.
We’ll use the links on the menu on the left (under the Google Geography entry) as we work through this workshop. You might want to keep this page open and use another browser window to open and work on Google Maps.